Hot Property: A Joe Hunter Short Story Read online

  ‘You going to shoot me too?’ the last man asked.

  ‘If I were I’d have done it by now.’ I put away my gun. ‘And it wouldn’t have been in the leg. Your employers would expect you to keep on fighting with only a flesh wound.’

  He curled his hands loosely, and again I studied them. When he’d sat with his hands on his thighs I’d noted the hardened callouses on his knuckles. Closer now, the toughened skin was more evident.

  ‘Pity we met under these circumstances,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we might have been friends.’

  ‘Not while you work for scum,’ I said.

  ‘A man’s got to make a living.’ He looked at the nearest crying man, shaking his head in regret. ‘You and me: we aren’t so different.’

  ‘Flip sides of the same coin,’ I said. ‘It’s just that we have a different idea of whose side we fall on.’

  ‘Unfortunate,’ he said, ‘but true.’

  With that he came at me.

  His entire body drove his punches. He barked out a kiai shout with each, confirming his traditional Okinawan karate background.

  Swaying, I palmed each of his punches aside, then threw an uppercut into his chin. It snapped his head back, but he didn’t go down. He immediately pivoted and drove his left elbow at my head. Ducking under his arm, I bobbed up behind him and caught him in a rear choke. I could have snapped his neck, but that wasn’t my purpose. I threw him away from me and he crashed over an expensive glass-topped table. The glass exploded under his weight. When he rose back to his feet he was bleeding from numerous cuts and scratches.

  ‘That stings,’ he said as he shook drips of blood from his palms.

  ‘Got to make things look realistic,’ I said.

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ he said, coming on again.

  ‘My pleasure,’ I said, rocking his head with a right cross.

  He didn’t go down this time either. He powered in with two short punches to my ribs, then, as I disengaged, he followed through with a front kick to my gut. I stumbled backwards. He followed, and this time he swiped his shin up under my guard to smash my ribs good and proper.

  At the last instant I snapped an elbow down on his leg, turning to absorb some of the impact, and I hauled him off balance with me. I jammed his supporting leg with my heel and tossed him over the fulcrum. He went flat on his back, this time demolishing an occasional table and scattering smutty magazines on the floor.

  He lay there stunned, grabbing any breath he could.

  I could have finished him with a kick to the face.

  But I gave him time to gather himself.

  When he stood this time, he was bent slightly with the pain in his spine. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

  But I had to make my message scream much louder.

  I moved towards him, curling my fists.

  The big man who thought of himself as head of security made an ineffective grab for me as I passed, and he coughed out a shout of anger. I smelled cigarettes on his breath as I knocked aside his arms and grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt. ‘I did you a favour, asshole,’ I told him. ‘Now stay down before I have to hurt you the way you hurt Cara.’

  He held open his palms in surrender.

  When next I turned to the gangland enforcer, he’d recovered and was coming at me. He caught me a solid blow to the cheek. I repaid him with a headbutt to his. Then we were grappling, and we staggered across the room in each others clutches, close enough to be drunken lovers: it was like a scene from one of Johnny Renard’s movies, where the levels of violence were more important than any intimacy.

  He punched, and I gave him some of the same punishment. Then I nutted him a second time and flattened the bridge of his nose. The fight went out of him and he folded at the knees. I kneed him in the chest and he went over backwards. He landed on his arse, but a wall held him in a seated position. His bleeding hands were on his thighs.

  He was in much the same pose as he had been throughout our earlier discussion. But now he looked as if he’d gone to war on his employers’ behalf. His nose was broken, he had livid bruises swelling beneath both eyes, and blood from his split lips was staining the front of his shirt.

  ‘Had enough?’

  He nodded. ‘Enough.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave things at that.’ I straightened out my rucked up jacket. ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘If you give me a minute,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, but I suggest you get these two idiots out of here soon.’

  ‘What are you planning on doing?’

  ‘Nothing. But I can’t speak for the fire your dopey pal started when he threw away his cigarette earlier.’

  I went out on to the deck and down the steps.

  I lit the cigarette lighter I’d appropriated from the big man’s shirt pocket when I’d grabbed him. I held the flame to the leaf litter beneath the deck.

  Then I headed off to meet with Rink and Cara.

  By the time I reached the opposite crest of the canyon and clambered up to the logging road, the house was a raging inferno, and the trio of men had made their escape. I could see them silhouetted against the flames as they stood in shocked awe as they watched the house burn.

  Rink pulled up in a rental SUV, Cara seated in the back, and his window whispered down. He offered me a grin as he peered across the dark void to where Renard’s house – and the source of suffering for Cara and dozens of other women - was a blazing beacon.

  ‘You got the message across, brother?’ he said.

  Just as the stanchions collapsed, bringing down the deck and half the flaming house in a roaring fireball, I said, ‘Loud and clear.’

  The End

  Hot Property was originally published in print in The Strand Magazine (Summer 2013 edition)

  I hope you enjoyed Hot Property, now please read on and equally enjoy this

  Bonus Tale Of Revenge

  THE ABLE MAN

  By Matt Hilton

  A man walked into a bar…

  But that was where the joke ended.

  He took himself a stool at the far end of the bar, beneath a plasma screen playing MTV with the sound muted. He could see the entrance door, and the short corridor to the restrooms, without having to turn his head. In the mirror behind the bar he could check out the patrons. There weren’t too many this early in the day, only a couple of grizzled old men sitting apart at separate corners of the room. They’d probably sat in those same chairs over many years, but had yet to acknowledge the presence of the other. There was a young couple huddled in a booth. They weren’t lovers, they were united in their addictions, and the weak beer they supped didn’t stop them fidgeting. They had suspicious eyes, but they barely checked out the newcomer. He was no cop, no drug dealer, and he wasn’t a mark, so they weren’t interested. Two skinny youths, enough alike to be twins, played pool at a table where the green baize was stained brown from old spillages.

  ‘What will I get ya?’

  The man looked across at the bartender who hadn’t moved from his place at the opposite end of the bar counter.

  ‘Got a Corona?’

  The bartender nodded and pushed away from the counter to dig in a cooler. He snapped off the top, handed over the bottle. ‘You need a glass?’

  ‘The bottle’s good, thanks. Got a slice of lime?’

  The bartender only looked, and the man shrugged. The man chucked a few dollars on the counter top. He pulled the bottle close but didn’t sip from it. He swept droplets of condensation onto the counter, watched bubbles rising up the neck to gather as a pale froth.

  ‘It ain’t like a good wine where you gotta let it breathe,’ the bartender pointed out as he deftly spirited the dollars into his pocket.

  Now the man just looked. The bartender shrugged and walked away. He leaned on the counter, at his previous place, and watched the cavorting of some nubile popster on the TV screen. Occasionally his eyes flicked over the man, but his curiosity went no
further.

  The man was unremarkable. To look at he was your usual guy down on his luck and killing part of another dreary uneventful day working his way towards the bottom of a glass. But that was only on outward appearance. His battered leather jacket and jeans hid a tight body, and the ball cap covered his high and tight cut that would equally mark him as a military man. The cap also served to conceal a recent wound to his skull. It still itched and wept beads of blood, but the sweatband kept it from trickling down his face. His jaw was lean, but there was nothing weak about it. There was an old scar on his right cheekbone that ended at the corner of his deep-set eye. Other scars showed white on the backs of his hands and fingers, stark against the suntanned skin. He wore no rings or other jewellery, though a pale band around this second finger showed that hadn’t always been the case. The only adornment he wore was a watch on his left wrist, a leather cover over its face, snapped down with a press-stud. It was a diver’s watch if anyone could have seen it. A Breitling given to him as an anniversary gift by his late wife.

  He tipped the Corona towards himself, but still didn’t drink.

  The motion didn’t elicit a response from the bartender. He’d been forgotten until next he ordered. Good enough. He allowed the beer to settle, again seemingly absorbed in watching the bubbles rise to the top.

  Nobody could have imagined his thoughts while watching the dancing bubbles. He gave no hint of the dark place to which he’d sunk in those brief seconds of recollection.

  He nursed the bottle some more. He glanced from the beer to the mirror, then laid his left elbow on the bar top. His position was languid, but purposeful. He could check out the four newcomers entering the bar without seeming to do so.

  They’d taken longer to come inside than he’d anticipated. He’d followed them to the roadside bar, and with no other destination in sight had took it that they had elected for a beer stop after their long drive. While they’d sat in their truck, one of them taking a call on an IPhone, he’d slipped by them unnoticed, concealed by the trail dust hanging in the air from where they’d come to an abrupt halt in the unpaved lot. They came into the dimness of the bar in the same herky-jerky manner as they drove their truck. The same herky-jerky way they’d each taken a go at his wife. The only time to his knowledge where they hadn’t been pushing and shoving at each other was when one of them cleanly swiped a blade across Trisha-Mae’s throat then dumped her over the dock into the river.

  They were brothers, or maybe cousins. Family at least. They were all big-boned, raw-faced men with the inbred stamp all over them. Motherfuckers was the least of aspersions that could be thrown at these guys. One of them had a turn in his eyes. In the pecking order he was lowest, and the one sent to the bar while the others headed for a booth. There was only the one booth, but the junkies knew to vacate it. They left the dregs in their glasses and staggered out: wise for having such crack-addled brains.

  The trio in the booth was noisy, laughing, swearing, scraping the table further out to make way for their bulk. A glass fell on the floor and shattered. The bartender studiously ignored the willful destruction of his property.

  The man didn’t look at Squint Eye. He didn’t have to look to know where he was: the sour stink of the red neck was enough to pinpoint him in the darkest of rooms. Squint Eye waved the bartender over, gruffly made his order. There was no please or thank you. He left without paying the tab, and returned to the booth. He had to pull up a spare chair and sit with his back to the bar. The bartender delivered four glasses and the remainder of a bottle of sour mash to their table. The biggest of the bunch in back of the booth snatched the bottle and told the bartender to fuck off. He returned to his usual place at the counter, making sure his frown was turned from the men in the booth. They noisily set about downing their first round.

  The man tipped his Corona towards him, same as before, then flipped it away, onto the bar top. He made a grab for it, but some of the amber liquid splashed across the walnut counter. The motion was akin to the accidental fumbling of a drunk and didn’t get a reaction from the family in the booth. But it caught a scowl from the bartender.

  ‘Got a cloth?’ the man asked.

  The bartender lifted a bar towel from a shelf and came over. It was bleached out, showing holes from much use. He made to swipe the spillage, but the man placed his hand on top of the tender’s hand and said, ‘There are some messes you just gotta clean up yerself.’

  The bartender glanced once at the family, back at the man and got the message. But he didn’t like it. He sighed through his clenched teeth, said, ‘I gotta go an’ check the barrels.’

  The man looked at him, and the bartender looked back. Then the bartender came out from behind the counter and went through the passage towards the restrooms. Maybe there was another room back there for barrel storage. Maybe there was a phone and the bartender was going to call the law. It wouldn’t matter. Things would be over before the cops made it to this out of the way place. They’d be as slow to respond as he assumed they were when the man had called them after the family brutally raped and then murdered his wife.

  The man sopped up the spilled beer, then held the wet towel in his fist. The bottle was still half full: optimistically he chugged it down in one long pull. He reversed his left hand on the neck and slid from the stool. He didn’t approach the booth. He went to the pool table. The twins saw him coming and stepped back. Their large Adam’s apples bobbed with unspoken questions as the man draped the wet cloth over the cue ball, then scooped it up. ‘Maybe now would be a good time to get on home, boys,’ said the man.

  The twins shared a look, like they were staring in a mirror, then nodded in unison. They put away their cue sticks, and headed for the exit.

  The man checked out the two old guys. Parked in their respective corners they were out of harm’s way. Maybe they knew what kind of establishment this was and chose those seats for sound reason. They could watch the action without having to play any active part in it. The man caught a knowing wink from one of the oldsters. He gave only a subtle nod in acknowledgement, then veered towards the booth. As he walked, he wound the cloth tight, letting the cue ball hang heavy in the bag made of the wet towel.

  ***

  Trisha-Mae gave Jerrod the Breitling on their fifth wedding anniversary. He gave her a gold necklace with a solitaire diamond on a locket. Neither could afford such extravagance, but that was the way they had ever been. The Breitling cost more than the car that Jerrod drove, but Trisha-Mae had wanted to mark their anniversary as something extra special.

  He admired the watch, checking out the black dial with three inset sub dials in white, not quite sure what each was for.

  ‘It’s a Navitimer Chronograph watch.’ Trisha-Mae beamed at him. ‘Waterproof to thirty metres.’

  ‘I’m an Army Ranger.’ Jerrod smiled back. ‘Not a Navy SEAL. You know I can’t swim worth a lick.’

  The watch cost her around eight thousand dollars, and in comparison his gift felt measly in comparison. But she loved it and wore it to bed that night. It was all she wore.

  That night he gave her a baby, the real gift she’d been longing for.

  The following day Jerrod reported to Fort Benning, and from there shipped out to Afghanistan for his third tour. He didn’t get to test its water resistance, but had purchased himself a leather cover to keep the mountain grit out of the Breitling’s workings. Daily he’d checked the countdown on his watch til he could get home to his pregnant wife.

  When he arrived home six months later, Trisha-Mae had swelled up nicely. The kid was growing big and strong inside of her, but she was taking no harm. Her pregnancy suited her. She’d blossomed like a rose and was prettier than ever.

  They lived on a small plot adjacent to the levee road between Lake Chicot and the Mississippi River, down in the southeast corner of Arkansas. It was a good place to live, a safe place usually. Neighbours were neighbourly. Doors weren’t always locked at night. It made their home ri
pe for invasion by the group of men on their way back from a drugs deal up in Pine Bluff, as they wended their way back to Louisiana. The men, all of the Cheighnier family, Cajun red necks from some bayou outside of Baton Rouge, entered their home in search of something the cocaine they snorted and booze they swilled couldn’t satisfy. They were looking for a woman, and, despite being heavy with child, Trisha-Mae was just what the doctor ordered.

  It was after two in the morning. The old clapboard house ticked as it cooled and settled. Outside the frogs and insects made a racket. Normally the ambient noise wouldn’t have covered the sound of the engine as the Cheighnier’s pulled up the dirt drive and parked on the lawn outside their house. It wouldn’t have hidden the whispers as the men inspected the house, then let them in through the front door. But both Jerrod and Trisha-Mae were exhausted, his first night home on furlough had been a full one. The first hint that the family was inside was when one of the Cheighnier’s placed the barrel of his gun against the man of the house’s head and ordered him to get the fuck outta the bed.

  Jerrod felt like a kicked dog. He was a goddamn Army Ranger, had survived three tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, taking on the best the mountain and desert fighters could field against him. Yet here he was, caught napping in his own bed by a bunch of drugged-up red necks. He was ashamed, but more than anything he was fearful for his wife. Trisha-Mae was in bed beside him, and if he fought then and there, she would get hurt. Their baby would get hurt. Jerrod allowed two of the ugly guys to drag him from the bed, his mind feverishly weighing the odds, figuring a plan to take the fight back to them.

  One of them held Trisha-Mae on the bed. Sleep had befuddled her, but now she was fully in the waking nightmare. She screamed silently as she beseeched Jerrod with her eyes.

  Jerrod tried to move towards her. A squint-eyed man punched him in the gut, and he folded.

  ‘Don’t get stupid now, boy,’ said the cockeyed man.

  They stood Jerrod in his boxer shorts. The two that held him pushed and shoved, and not always at him. His arms were twisted behind his back. One of them got a cord from the bedside lamp and tied it tight round his wrists. He was kicked to his knees.